J.K. And The Crew

I saw the Coen Brothers' Burn After Reading in the theatre, originally. Now I've seen parts of it on TV. It's not bad, but I can see why it didn't click with an audience. It was no flop, but with a cast that includes George Clooney and Brad Pitt, I'm sure the studio was hoping it'd do better.

First, almost all the characters are awful people. Selfish, harsh, stupid. They do ugly things. I know this is a dark comedy, but if everyone is unpleasant, it can grate. Raising Arizona and The Big Lebowski were full of awful, violent people, but you still were rooting for the protagonists.

Second, the film is pretty foul-mouthed. Not everyone cares, but some people are turned off by repeated used of the F-word.

Third, it's a shaggy dog story. It doesn't amount to much. (The Big Lebowski is a shaggy dog story too, which is one of the reasons it wasn't that well-liked when it came out--it's since become a cult item.)

Fourth, and I think this is the big turn-off for the audience. There are only a few nice characters in the movie, and (spoiler) they are dispatched in gruesome ways. In particular, when Brad Pitt's stupid (even for this movie) but sweet character gets his head blown off about an hour in, a lot of the audience checks out. Up till then, it was a harsh comedy, but now it's downright ugly.

But once you're steeled to the plot machinations, a lot of it works. Malkovich is quite funny. Pitt is fun. Clooney has a great scene where he believes he's found out about the true nature of Frances McDormand. And best of all, though they only share a couple short scenes, David Rasche and J.K. Simmons as CIA officials are magnificent. They're sort of a Greek chorus, summing up the action from the sidelines. Simmons in particular as the intelligent and amoral director almost steals the film with only a few minutes of screen time.